


I don't see them

by Anonymous



Category: Wreckers (2011)
Genre: Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Infidelity, M/M, Physical Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Incest, Unhealthy Relationships, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:08:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26917879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: All those lies, all those secrets, they were tearing her apart, but at the same time they felt like a plaster, a bandage that once it was taken away would leave them all bleeding out.
Relationships: David Johnson/Dawn Johnson, David Johnson/Nick Johnson, Dawn Johnson & Nick Johnson
Kudos: 3
Collections: Anonymous





	I don't see them

_I don't see a single thing, not the names or mud they sling_

_all I have is what you bring when I see you._

_He's good to me, beyond any doubt, beyond the grave_

_my love's so very good to me..._

I Don't See Them, Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott

Dawn had never noticed how big the sky was until she'd come to live in the Fenlands. The flat expanses of fields and meadows didn't block any of it out, and so the sky hung over the landscape like a blue ball or a grey, smothering woollen coat, the clouds reaching down to touch the horizon in a way they'd never done in London or Manchester, where the sky looked like an afterthought, a ceiling, something you could easily overlook.

Here the sky was larger than life, looming, alive. She told as much to Nick, and he laughed his erratic, giddy laugh, turning his face upwards to look for himself. “I could spend hours looking at the clouds when I was young” he told her. He could be so sweet, at times, but then the tide would turn and he would start talking about murder and rape and child abuse with the same kind of childish glee, and it would freeze her down to her bones.

He did it to make her recoil, to get a reaction out of her, all his little horror stories of old women committing suicide, of mothers drowning their own children, of fathers fucking their daughters. He did it for attention, she thought, or maybe because he was trying to tell her something.

“Why did you come back here if everything is so bloody?” she asked him suddenly.

He shrugged, still looking at the sky. “Once I felt like I would never be able to escape this place. I guess I wanted to see if it still would have the same power over me now that I'm all grown up.”

“And? Does it?”

He smiled, but it looked more like he was in pain. “Nothing changed.”

She nodded, looking down at the grass and daisies and forget-me-nots that they were stepping over. She looked up to see the old school chapel nearing, still hidden behind some trees.

“You never did tell me what happened when you met that ghost.”

He smiled toothily. “It was a spirit, not a ghost. I knew because you couldn't see through it. It told me my future”

“What was your future then?”

“It told me I would die in this town, unmourned, without a proper burial. That's why I joined the army, maybe. So that if I died this fucking place wouldn't be able to claim my bones”

Dawn frowned, but said nothing.

“This town is a gateway to hell. One day it'll burn to the ground like Sodom. All the darkness, all the medieval muck surely can't keep existing in the same world as Starbucks and cell phones, right?”

He sounded hysterical, and Dawn chose not to answer.

“Anyway, I lied to you” he said, almost as an afterthought.

“It wasn't the spirit, or the army that shaped me the most. I think it was the beatings.” Dawn looked at him cautiously. Nick was so open where David kept it all locked inside, sometimes she wished Nick would just shut up about all that horrible shit he kept digging up, like a dog in a garden full of bones, and he would pretend to be normal just the once. She felt evil right after thinking it.

“Being pushed and slapped and drowned by all and sundry, you know. It does something to the way you love.” He wasn't smiling anymore, he looked as if he was struggling to dig this particular bone out.

“Like you can never be loved without being hated. Like the affection goes hand in hand with the pain.”

Dawn felt chilled to her core. Images crossed her mind, of two brothers hugging. Of a traumatized younger brother who sleepwalks like only little children usually do. Of an older, more mature brother whose patience is worn thinner and thinner. Of the rattling of pans in the dead of night, and the sudden destructive fury she'd never seen in David before. Of a weeping, confused Nick dropping to the ground to beg for forgiveness, for love; gripping his brother's ankle in a pathetic attempt to keep him from leaving.

Dawn felt sick, and so tired of not _knowing_.

As they reached the schoolhouse he took her hand, twirled her around, and she laughed. “Keep those children from becoming like me” he said, and there was such a deep sadness in his eyes that Dawn felt her heart sink. 

#

“Don't look at me like that, Dawn. I'm the saint one. Dave's the one who pushed mum down the stairs! Fuck me. Old mum, eh? Gave her something to think about.” 

Dawn froze, looking a David.

“Nicky” he said, quietly, with an odd look on his face.

Then something in him changed abruptly, like a spark suddenly turning into a forest fire, and he lifted the croquet mallet he was holding to violently hit his brother. Dawn screamed at him to stop, but she was powerless to keep them apart, as always. Nick cried out, falling back down into the kiddie pool, and then David was dropping the bat and walking away.

She helped Nick out of the pool, noticing that he was limping quite badly. “He'll be happy once he's crippled me” he said. “Fuck knows he's being trying long enough.”

Dawn didn't understand, but she didn't ask him to explain. She was afraid of Nick, afraid of what he would tell her if she only asked. All those lies, all those secrets, they were tearing her apart, but at the same time they felt like a plaster, a bandage that once it was taken away would leave them all bleeding out.

#

Doubt started eating away at Dawn early on, but it was more of a feeling than real suspicion. It was an unease spreading in her stomach when she saw the two of them curled up in bed right after Nick had woken them up with his screams. It was the sudden, irrational fear she would get whenever David was next to her in bed but she couldn't see his face. It was the roughhousing that always ended up with Nick held down, lifted up, swung around.

At first that had seemed like a childish game, harmless if a bit odd. But there was something there, something that made her skin crawl, something primordial and disquieting that went along perfectly with the landscape of decaying farmhouses and barley rigs and wheat fields.

Sometimes the two men would share a look, and it wasn't a playful one anymore, and Dawn had to look away.

Like that night after Nick had an episode in the fields, when David had put him to bed with an unusual sort of care, a care Dawn never even got close to knowing from him.

Dawn remembers standing in the doorway, feeling like she was intruding in something that she oughtn't be seeing as Nick grabbed David's wrist, vulnerable and open as he only ever was with his brother. David's quiet “don't”, clearly not meant for Dawn to hear, as his younger brother clutched at him, a sudden look in his wide eyes, strange in its intensity, and then a harsher “don't” from David, and the wounded, confused expression on Nick's face as his brother pulled away from him.

“Why has he come back?” she asked afterwards, and a spark of something resembling fear passed on her husband's face.

“I used to hold him. That's all. I mean, you saw.” David had said, feeling her suspicion.

“Hold me like that.” She said, and he did, she straddled him and they shared a kiss.

Afterwards, as they were lying in bed, she told him “I hope you don't hold Nick like _that_ ”, thinking she was being funny. David’s face had gone stony. He'd worn that very same expression that night at the pub, when Nick had come out wearing her dress, amongst catcalls and laughter.

“Of course not” he deadpanned, and Dawn had felt that same fear wash over her once more.

#

The day Dawn last saw Nick she had only wanted to rid herself of him once and for all. She was sick of the whole situation, she only wanted things to go back to how they were, before Nick had placed himself between her and her husband, before all those horrible things about David had come out.

He'd been camped out in the garage up at the old house, and as soon as she saw him she tried to leave, but he kept her from doing so, clutching her waist in that sort of half tackle he did with his brother whenever David was ignoring him, or was angry at him. She stayed, more out of her need to know than for anything else.

“I've let all my mates down. I just can't _sleep_ ” Nick said miserably, and she felt a distant echo of the friendship that they had shared, a vague recollection of the peace and the comfort they once found in each other.

She was reminded of a thousand little things as he stood there, looking dejected; of the family Nick had tried to make for himself only to end up with a music box he cherished more than anything he owned as the only memento of them; of the nasty scars he had revealed when he had undressed in the pub's loo, which looked as if he had been mauled by a bear, but Dawn knew were manmade through and through; of when he had tried to kiss her, and after she'd stopped him he had looked at her almost as if he had really been sleepwalking up until then and he was just now waking up, accepting her hug as they both shivered in the chilly night, the only heat to be found in each other.

The way his pulse beat against her ear in an erratic rhythm that had been all his, faltering and quick like he was about to have a heart attack, and she had felt something akin to love, not pity anymore but rather sympathy for this broken young man, this one-legged tin soldier who got thrown into the fireplace one time too many.

But now she found that her fondness of Nick wasn't stronger than her own desperation, her own need to make light of things.

“I have to know. About you two.” She said, as Nick looked around as if seeing things she couldn't in the dusty, empty space around them.

“Well, he loves me” he said, as if that's all there was to it. Dawn laughed scornfully, and she found that once she started stopping was hard.

“David l... looked out for me, yeah? Because of dad. But he kind of...” he paused, as if looking for the right words, or maybe as if once again struggling with one of his deepest-buried secrets. “...owned me.”

Dawn felt a cold chill fill her chest, her stomach turn; “That's not love” she said, shaking her head, eyes welling up, still a shadow of a bitter smile on her lips.

“He fucks you” Nick said, leaning over the car, pointing a finger at her. “But he loves _me_ ”

“He _hates_ you” she says spitefully, before making her way out of the garage.

Nick was like a child, and it was hard not to feel sorry for him for all the hits he’d evidently taken from life since he was young, but he was also a child in the way that he played with other people’s toys. Other people's wives. Other people's husbands. Suddenly she realized she didn't care about any of it, whatever fucked up relationship the two of them had, all that mattered was that she loved her husband, and Nick was keeping them apart.

He needed to go, and if she had to give him money for him to do so, she would.

#

Nick was gone, and Dawn finally had her baby. It seemed that everything finally had worked out, that nothing could spoil her life, her little family.

Then the dreams had started. Sometimes they were the same faraway silhouettes of two men hugging, holding on for too long, one of them pushing the other away, deflecting the other's attempts to hold him and finally beating the other down, kicking him until he was motionless on the ground.

Sometimes the dreams didn't feel like dreams at all; in those it was Nick there with her, walking alongside her down the country lane that led to the school, playing with the dog, eating stolen candy bracelets, telling her about rotting corpses and horrifying childhood memories.

“He used to have me wear mum's dresses” he said once, smiling up at the sun. “When we were little. I don't think that he realized why, at the time. He just told me that I looked very pretty, just like a girl. I used to have long hair then, you see.” Dawn didn't want to hear, she wanted to run away, but she couldn't.

“Then mum found us. Davy had the foresight to hide of course, but I was always a bit slow on the uptake. She thought I was a little faggot in the making, she did. She told dad, too. I still have scars from that night.”

He was still smiling, nothing quite fazed him in her dreams, he was as relaxed and playful as he had been when they were on one of their walks.

“So of course, when she saw us kissing a few years later, she blamed me. I was the wrong one, not David, clever, patient David, who only got straight A's and still made the time to look after his problematic little brother.” his tone betrayed a vicious bitterness Dawn had never heard from him before.

“She didn't usually beat me. Well, a bit, bit of pushing around and slaps and that, but never as hard as dad. Never with a belt. But that day she really was cross. Hah.”

Dawn put her hands over her ears, but nothing blocked Nick's words out.

“So she brought me to her room, got out one of dad's belts and...” _flack-fleck-giddley-geck_ supplied Dawn's memory of that old schoolteacher of theirs.

“Davy didn't like that one bit. He was the only one who was allowed to touch me” he giggled. “He came up behind mum and dragged her off me. Only she wouldn't shut up. You've seen how he gets. He gets that from dad, I think. So he pushed her, and maybe he didn't mean for her to fall down the stairs, who knows. Still, she ended up at the hospital and all the king’s horses and all the king's men couldn't put mummy together again.” Nick singsonged. “She never got better. Died of internal failure a few years later. I guess that's why he got so mad when I put your dress on, eh?”

Dawn shivered, and shivered, and shivered.

“Of course, David couldn't own up to it. He couldn't afford to, he had a brilliant future ahead of him, and he was eighteen, a legal adult; they would have locked him up far longer than they would have a fifteen-year-old.”

“ _Then they sent you away_ ”. Gary had said that night at the pub. “ _He did a spell in borstal, about ten years ago, Dawn. Away from the prying eyes of the state_.”

Every piece was falling into place; that awful jigsaw puzzle that was her husband's past, all she had strived to avoid before was now taking shape, and she didn't want to see, she didn't want to see.

“It had to be me, you see?” Nick continued, unperturbed by Dawn's horrified reaction. “Like I said, he owned me. Every last bit of my soul. I almost started believing that story, I had repeated it so many times.”

_It's not true, it's not true, it can't be._

“You're lying.” Dawn said, refusing to accept any of it, any part of that horror.

“I never lied to you, Dawn” Nick said simply, sounding like it didn't much matter to him if she believed him or not.

“I never stopped loving him, you know, even after they sent me away.” He shot her a bitter smile. “But he never did love me, did he? I should've listened to you, that day. That's not love.”

The countryside wasn't golden and sunny anymore, the sky loomed heavy and leaden over the ominous shape of the village. “You were right. The sky's huge here. Not that I can see it where I am, of course.” Suddenly Nick didn't look relaxed or playful anymore, he looked like he did that last time Dawn saw him, dirty and sleep deprived, and so immensely sad.

“What do you mean?” Dawn asked, feeling her heart in her throat.

“I'm dead, Dawn. He killed me. Buried me near the old house.” He said, looking into the distance. “But you already knew that, didn't you? You’re just lying to yourself to maintain that illusion of a perfect life you've created in your mind.”

“No!” Dawn cried, taking her face in her hands, the blackest dread rising up inside her. She felt Nick's hand rubbing soothing circles on her back.

“He couldn't bear to think that you were cheating on him with me. Or maybe he couldn't stand me cheating on him with you, who knows. Maybe he decided that if he couldn't have me the way he wanted nobody could.”

“Oh, God.” Dawn sobbed, and the wind picked up.

“It's alright, I forgive you. I forgave him, as well. I had already forgiven him as he was beating me to death, like I always forgave him.”

Dawn looked at Nick, and he smiled, but the smile didn't come close to ending that infinite sadness in his clever blue eyes.

“You know what the worst part is?” He said, looking back out to the fields. “The worst part is, this place got my bones in the end.”


End file.
